


Second Loves

by lemonsharks



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Falling In Love, Getting to Know Each Other, Past Relationship(s)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-27
Updated: 2016-08-27
Packaged: 2018-08-11 09:19:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,015
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7885369
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemonsharks/pseuds/lemonsharks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Briala feels out her new place in the Inquisition, and her new place at the Inquisitor's side.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Second Loves

**Author's Note:**

  * For [redluna](https://archiveofourown.org/users/redluna/gifts).



> Biggest thanks to my beta T, it is not your fandom but u r still gr8.

A note found in the fireplace of an inn in Val Royeaux, the wax seal of the Inquisition melted almost past legibility. 

_I find myself in need of a spymistress, and I recall you have certain skills. We should meet at the induction of our new Divine._

  


The flash of bright brown eyes and coils glossy brown hair, the youthful face and chipped-flint grin. She had dirt and blood beneath her fingernails. Blood on her wicked daggers, blood spattered across the tunic she stripped out of in the kitchen while Briala watched from afar.

“I’ve been called ‘rabbit’ one time too many this evening,” she had said. “You want me to lean a little your way, I’ll give you the whole damned country.”

She had walked poised back into the great vestibule, her finery mussed and he head high despite the people inside.

Briala remembers the Inquisitor. 

 

Emperor Gaspard is cordial at the induction, too-smiling beneath his mask. Tonight she leaves her face bare rather than touch the de Chalons mask one more time. 

The Inquisitor alights when she sees her, and Briala thinks she is not yet twenty-five. That she herself has never been so young. 

“Leliana will settle in well,” she says, and, “Dance with me tonight. We’ve much to discuss.”

 _She speaks plainly_ , Briala thinks with a sigh, but she dances with the Inquisitor all that evening, and they talk of the arrangements to be made for Briala’s new place in the Inquisition. 

“It’s Ellana,” she says, pressing her gloved palm against Briala’s. “My friends use my name.”

  


Her place is little different than it had been in Celene’s court, in Gaspard’s: she minds the spies and interprets their news and spends most long days up in the rookery above the empty, painted solar with the ravens. Ellana visits often, to hear of their agents and their exploits. 

“You would do well to hide your emotions,” she says. “At least in Orlais.

She had not won the court’s love at the Winter Palace; she had killed the grand duchess with her own hands.

“You sound like my mother--there’s a _da’len_ tacked onto the end of that, isn’t there?”

“You know I am right.”

She leans over the table, nose inches from Briala’s, and Briala’s heart twitches between her lungs.

“I’m better at sealing rifts,” she says. “Politics are for Keepers, not Hunters.”

  


But her next trip to Orlais she dons a mask, white gold and veridium, with the gentle face of a halla curving over her eyes and curling horns ascending from the points over the eyes. A motif of leaves at the sides shines with the light of the Fade. 

Briala cannot help but smile when Ellana spins to show off Dagna’s latest handiwork, overwrought and perfect. No one will forget their Lavellan is an elf; she will not _permit_ it.

“It looks heavy,” Briala says with a smile.

“It feels like it might fall off.”

“You can weave the ribbons into your hair--it will help distribute the weight. Here, let me show you.”

  


Debriefings in the War Room last long into the evening; the dying sun filters in through the high windows and shades strands of bright auburn through in Ellana’s hair. 

“Walk with me?” she asks, when Cullen and Josephine have left. 

She could decline, and Ellana would return to her quarters or to the Herald’s Rest with no questions. Instead she places her hand on Ellana’s arm while they slip out into the gardens. Her breath comes short. 

“It is a beautiful night,” she says. “Not too cold.” 

“You’re very warm,” Ellana says. He eyes glint.

She turns her arm and twines her fingers with Briala’s when they ascend the stairs to the ramparts, the last of twilight giving way to an sky heavy with thousands upon thousands of stars. 

They walk for a time in silence and Briala’s chest grows tighter by the step. She knows this sensation, but in the same breath it is nothing like any she has ever felt before. 

“Ellana,” she says, and they stop. Music from the tavern drifts up into the night, shouts and laughter with it. 

Ellana licks her lips, leaves them glossy-wet in the moonlight and the torchlight. 

Briala kisses her, and her lips are chapped rough from weeks spent in wild places and warm with the heat of her body. A different kiss. No loneliness to it. The world does not end. 

  


Ellana returns to the rookery the next morning, with bread and cheese and fruit. She wears a blush high on her cheeks and on the upper edges of her ears, and she sits with trembling hands over a sheaf of Briala’s papers. 

“Hello,” she says, one word that conveys so much.

A soft smile breaks over Briala’s face. A bird cries, and she knows she must ask--that she must begin, and speaking plainly has never been her strong suit. She clears her throat, and says the Inquisitor’s name. 

Ellana starts before she truly has the chance to. “Last night was very good and I-- I-- you should know that I’ve been hurt. Before you go all-in.”

“You aren’t alone in that, you know,” Briala says, taking Ellana’s hand in hers across the table. She turns their hands so that they’re palm-to-palm, as they had been that first time they had danced.

“Do you want this?” Ellana asks. 

One kiss they can leave behind. She finds she does not want to.

Briala takes Ellana’s palm and kisses the center, dry lips on flushed skin. 

She nods, and says, “As much as I have ever wanted anything.”

  


They wear no masks with one another. 

Ellana spends her free hours in the rookery, playing with the crackling fire in her palm and smiling, laughing, spilling joy that washes over Briala like eddies in a stream. 

She kisses her hands when she passes beside her, or her cheek, or her mouth, with no worry that someone might catch a glimpse of them together. The rest of the Inquisition looks on and smiles, and Briala smiles with them. 


End file.
